HGSE Community Celebrates 2021 Honors

Below is a look at a small portion of the prestigious honors awarded to members of the HGSE community:

FACULTY

• Dean Bridget Long was recognized with the 2021 Spencer Mentor Award which honors mentors who have demonstrated extraordinary contributions to supporting the research training and career trajectories of education researchers.
• Associate Professor Nadine Gaab and her collaborators were awarded a grant from the Lemann Brazil Research Fund for their global study examining the effects of COVID-19 restrictions on literacy practices in a child’s home.
• Assistant Professor Anthony Jack was the co-recipient of the Doris Entwisle Early Career Award from the Sociology of Education section of the American Sociological Association. He was also selected as commencement speaker and received an honorary degree at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania in October 2020.
• Professor Andrew Ho was elected to the National Academy of Education, which honors scholars for their valuable contributions to educational research and policy development.
• Professor Chris Dede was honored with the 2020 Community Builder Award in the Educators category from the National Coalition for Technology in Education and Training.

STUDENTS

• Ph.D. student Wendy Wei was named a Center on the Developing Child Science and Innovation Fellow. Her research seeks to identify pathways for promoting access to high-quality early childhood education and children’s school readiness skills.
• Ed.L.D. student Michelle Rinehart was one of two recipients of the 2021 Johnny L. Veselka Scholarship, awarded each year by the Texas Association of School Administrators to outstanding doctoral students pursuing careers in educational leadership, especially the superintendency.
• Ph.D. students Samantha Batel; Madelyn Gardner; Zachary Himmelsbach, Ed.M.'17; Salman Khan; Farah Mallah, Ed.M.'18; Victoria Lee; Katherine Larned; and Matthew Lenard were selected as Partnering in Education Research (PIER) Fellows by the Center on Education Policy Reasearch at Harvard University.
• Matthew Lenard was also awarded the ECMC Foundation Postsecondary Career and Technical Education (CTE) Research Fellowship and the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE) Summer Fellowship.
• Ph.D. students Nozomi Nakajima, Yu (Lena) Shi, and Celia Reddick, Ed.M.'15, were awarded NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowships. Ph.D. students Becca Bassett and Mark Chin, Ed.M.'16, were named semifinalists. Shi was also the recipient of an AEFP New Scholars Grant.
• Incoming master's student Jigyasa Labroo was awarded the K.C. Mahindra Scholarship for Post Graduate Studies Abroad.
• Ph.D. students Linda Andreev, Orelia Jonathan, and Christian Walkes were awarded honorable mention in the predoctoral category of the 2021 Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs competition administered by the Fellowships Office of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Ph.D. student Martha Franco, Ed.M.'15, was awarded honorable mention in the dissertation category. Andreev also was awarded an AERA Research Grant.
• Ph.D. student Charles Gale was named the recipient of the 2021 Tessa Jowell Doctoral Fellowship by the Harvard Ministerial Leadership Program. His research will build on education reforms in Ghana by identifying measurable factors that can predict the performance of early career teachers.
• Ed.M. student Sergio Estrada, a full-time physics/chemistry/engineering teacher at Riverside High School in El Paso, was honored with the Ernest and Sarah Butler Award for Excellence in Science Teaching from the Texas Medical Association.
• Ph.D. students Tatiana Geron and Tara Nicola, Ed.M.'20, were awarded GSAS Term-Time Fellowships.
• Ph.D. student Mikko Silliman, Ed.M.'20, was the recipient of a Yrjo Jahnsson Doctoral Stipend.
• Ed.M. student Kim Frusciante was named an HGSE Summer Entrepreneurship Fellow, receiving $7,500 towards the startup of nonprofit Early Partners.
• Ed.M. student Philip Nguyen was given the 30 Under 30 Changemakers Award by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools for his work with EdChiefs and The New Jersey Charter School Launch Program.
• Thrive!, a venture launched by Ed.L.D. student Omolara Fatiregun, was runner up in the social impact track of the President's Innovation Challenge.

ALUMNI

• Megan Red Shirt-Shaw, Ed.M.'17, director of the University of South Dakota Native Student Services, was elected to Harvard's Board of Overseers for a six-year term.
• Amreen Poonawala, Ed.M.'21, was named an HGSE Summer Entrepreneurship Fellow, receiving $7,500 towards the startup of nonprofit ChalkEd. ChalkEd was also a runner up for the 2021 President’s Innovation Challenge Ingenuity Award.
• Elijah Armstrong, Ed.M.’20, was a recipient of the 2021 Paul G. Hearne Emerging Leader Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities which recognizes outstanding emerging leaders with disabilities who exemplify leadership, advocacy, and dedication to the broader cross-disability community.  
• Kevin Gee, Ed.M.'06, Ed.D.'10, associate professor at University of California Davis' School of Education, was named a 2020–21 Chancellor's Fellow, an honor given to UC Davis associate professors or newly promoted full professors to support their scholarly work and service to the university as dedicated teachers and campus citizens.
• Liz Phipps Soeiro, Ed.M.'19, librarian at Cambridgeport School in Massachusetts, is a 2021 recipient of the Super Librarian Award from the Massachusetts School Library Association.
• Lucia Mock Muñoz de Luna, Ed.M.'12, C.A.S.'13, a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, has won a Student Undergraduate Teaching Award. She is one of only 11 teaching assistants from across the university to win one of the awards.
• Characterizing Young Adolescents' Argumentative Writing, part of the doctoral dissertation of Ziyun Deng, Ed.M.'13, Ed.D.’21, has been selected as one of the winners at the Yidan Prize Doctoral Conference.
• Xiaoheng “Sally” Xu, Ed.M.'14, was named a Schwarzman Scholar, an academic honor awarded to individuals interested in studying China and its relationship with the world. The scholarship finances a one-year master’s program in Global Affairs at Schwarzman College, a residential college located within Tsinghua University in Beijing.
• Annette Finnegan, Ed.M.'21, and Said Bilani, Ed.M.'21, are among the recipients of the 2021 Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Fellowship, a program that seeks to attract and prepare outstanding young people for a foreign service career in the U.S. Department of State.
• Sheldon Berman, Ed.M.'93, Ed.D.'93, former superintendent of Andover (Massachusetts) Public Schools is a recipient of the 2020 Mary Utne O’Brien Award for Excellence in Expanding the Evidence-Based Practice of SEL. The award is presented annually by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) to celebrate lifetime achievement in the field of social-emotional learning (SEL), innovation and excellence in SEL, and strong leadership across the growing field of social-emotional learning.
• Sharon Ravitch, Ed.M.'94, C.A.S.'95, professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, was among those honored by the school with Faculty Recognition Awards for going "above and beyond to assist, support, and/or mentor students during this academic year."
• Irteza Binte-Farid, Ed.M.'15, a Ph.D. student at PennGSE, was awarded a NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship. Tolani Britton, Ed.M.'15, Ed.D.'18, assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley’s Graduate School of Education, and Adela Soliz, Ed.D.'16, assistant professor at Vanderbilt's Peabody College, were named NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellows. David Liebowitz, Ed.M.'08, Ed.M.'11, Ed.D.'15, assistant professor at the University of Oregon was named a NAEd/Spencer Research Development Awardee.

If you are a member of the HGSE community and recently have won an award or achieved a special honor, please email marin_jorgensen@gse.harvard.edu.